George and Mary Ann — Two Missing Pieces of the Nolan Story

 

Could it be possible that a widow, with seven children in tow, would think it a well-advised move to relocate seven hundred miles away from family in the 1870s? That's the question I have to grapple with as I ponder the disappearance of Sarah, one of the recently-discovered Murdock sisters, after her sighting in the 1860 census in Lafayette, Indiana.

Lafayette had become home for the Murdock siblings after their emigration from their native Ireland. I first learned about the family when Eliza Murdock became second wife to my husband's second great-grandfather, John Stevens. In the few rare times in which Eliza appeared in local newspaper reports, it was usually in the same breath as a mention of one or more of her business-savvy brothers.

It wasn't until the untimely death of Eliza's brother John that I learned there were two other sisters. I'm currently in the process of tracing each of those two siblings and—wouldn't you know it?!—losing track of the younger one almost right away.

Sarah was mentioned in her brother John Murdock's 1874 will as the wife of John Nolan. Unfortunately, the will didn't mention where Sarah was living at the time. As we've already discovered, while there was a John Nolan listed in the 1870 census for the Lafayette area, that man did not appear to be head of the family we're seeking. While I did find a Sarah Nolan in the 1880 census, she was living seven hundred miles away from Lafayette in Sedgwick County, Kansas, in the vicinity of Wichita.

While the 1860 census had listed the Nolan children as James, Mary Ann, John, and George, we've already noticed that missing from the possible 1880 census were Mary Ann and George. True, by then, those two children could have been married or living on their own—but what if something else had happened to them? 

I took that possibility as a prompt to go exploring. After all, not only were Mary Ann and George missing, but their father John was not listed in that possible 1880 household, either. That was my opportunity to explore scenarios, beginning back at Lafayette.

The first name I searched for was George Nolan. Call me a research chicken, but looking for John or Mary can introduce too many false leads. Coupled with a surname like Nolan, the names were too common; I thought searching for George might give me an edge over the other two names.

All I could find in Lafayette was a Find A Grave entry for someone named George Nolan. It was not a promising entry. Unlike the memorials we genealogists like to find on that website—complete with clear photograph of the headstone—this one had no pictures whatsoever. Worse, there was no date of birth given, only the date of death: 22 February 1872. This was not turning out to be a likely match.

Before giving up on Lafayette searches, though, I needed to go through the paces with the other two Nolan names. Though there was a John Nolan listed for the same cemetery, the dates indicated someone younger than Sarah's husband. But when I looked up Mary Ann Nolan at Find A Grave, there was an entry for someone buried in the same cemetery. 

Once again, the memorial contained no photographs, and there was no date of birth. This Mary A. Nolan had died in 1871, just over seven months prior to George's death. Still, without a date of birth or even photographs of the headstones, I thought there was not enough information available to pursue the possibility—until I spotted one familiar detail.

Each of the memorials I viewed listed the location of the burial. Each of the two had been buried in Saint Patrick's addition, section one, lot ten. It sounded very much like this George and Mary belonged in one family's plot. That was a promising indicator, but not quite the detail which convinced me that these two were likely Murdock descendants.

What clinched it for me was that I recalled having seen that burial location before, but I couldn't remember where. Sure that it was for someone else in the extended Murdock family, I went back through my notes, checking every Find A Grave memorial I had added to my research log to see what their plot locations were.

I found my answer when I reached the entries for Sarah Murdock Nolan's oldest sister Ellen. Recall that Ellen was the one who married Thomas "Megarry"—eventually spelled McGarry—and had the successful young son named in John Murdock's will as his uncle's favorite nephew.

As it turned out, Ellen, her husband Thomas, and their son Thomas were all buried in that same family plot: Saint Patrick's addition, section one, lot ten. Of course, I couldn't just stop with that set of helpful records; I had to see if anyone else was listed in the same family plot. Looking further, I also found another entry for someone named Sabina McGarry—another namesake of her maternal grandmother, Sabina Kelly Murdock, the three sisters' mother.

With that exploration of Saint Mary's Cemetery via Find a Grave, I feel confident I resolved the issue of the missing children of John and Sarah Nolan: George and Mary Ann died young while in Lafayette, Indiana, before the rest of the family moved westward to Wichita.

But what about their father? There was no sign of John Nolan in that family plot, back in Lafayette. And, as I had noted yesterday, it would seem an unlikely move for Sarah, as a widow, to choose to move so far away from family in that era of time.

The next step, then, will be to find any sign of Sarah's husband John Nolan in Kansas, any time after the 1874 birth of their possible youngest child in Indiana.

"In a Business Way"

 

Give a promising young man with good business sense a modest sum of money and see what happens. In the case of young Samuel McGarry, beneficiary of his uncle John Murdock's bequest upon his untimely death, his $1,000 inheritance may have become a good investment, indeed.

According to inflation calculators, a gift of $1,000 in 1874 would be the equivalent of receiving nearly $27,000 in today's money. Regardless of what other typical twenty-one-year-old young men might do with such an amount today, Samuel McGarry put his inheritance to good use in a business way.

When we discussed young Samuel yesterday, he was living in Lafayette, Indiana, in 1880, along with his young wife and baby. Samuel's wife, as we discovered, was the former Mary Finnigan who, a decade prior, had been living with her mother and brother John in her step-father's household in the same city.

What became of them next? After all, census records leave a twenty-year gap after that 1880 census—a gap of time in which quite a bit can change in a young family.

If it weren't for the quintessential "some kind soul" of the Find A Grave volunteer variety, perhaps I would never have guessed what happened next to favored nephew Samuel McGarry. Fortunately, that thoughtful volunteer posted an old newspaper clipping on the memorial for Samuel's brother Thomas, who died in Lafayette in 1895.

According to that brief notice, among Thomas' surviving family members was one "S. J. McGarry" of Atlanta, Georgia. 

Really? Could the business-savvy Samuel McGarry have left his family's home—and all the network of business connections forged by his successful uncles in Lafayette—to strike out on his own?

Answer: you bet he did.

Just to double check that I had the right person in Atlanta, I not only found Samuel in the 1900 census—remember I would never have guessed to look for him there otherwise—but also in the city directory for that same year. Note how many McGarry names show up in that directory: not just Samuel and his wife Mary, but two other McGarry men, James F. and John J.

Each of the men are listed by the occupation of boilermaker. All worked for the same company, J. J. Finnigan. By now, that name is starting to sound familiar, so I double-check the others listed in Samuel's household. Sure enough, John J. and James F. were Samuel's sons, as well as a daughter, also named Mary.

Samuel's household in 1900 also listed another member, a man listed as a boarder. His name turns out to be John J. "Finigan." Not just because this John Finigan happens to coincidentally also have been born in Indiana—same as Samuel, his wife Mary, and their two sons—but that name sounds familiar for other reasons.

It is. This lodger, John J. Finigan, had the same name as Mary's brother John Finnigan from the 1870 census—and when we skip forward another decade to the 1910 census, the enumerator clarified that very relationship.

This John J. Finnigan happened to also be a boilermaker, same as his brother-in-law and nephews—and likely also was the namesake of the Atlanta business known then as J. J. Finnigan & Co.

I can't determine just how successful Samuel McGarry was in that business endeavor—his will doesn't reveal much, other than his business interest in the company and some real estate holdings in the city of Atlanta. But the many entries in the local newspaper upon his "untimely death" present a hint of how well known Samuel McGarry was in the area. Called a "pioneer business man," he was considered a "leading citizen of Atlanta" who was "interested in a number of progressive movements."

We can glean from the articles written after Samuel's passing that he had arrived in Atlanta "in the prime of life" in about 1888. While we can infer from his entry in the 1900 census that the McGarry family had stopped first in Alabama, where their daughter Mary was born in 1885, Samuel must have learned of a business opportunity farther to the east and made his move there while his daughter Mary was just a toddler. Whether John J. Finnigan accompanied Samuel's family on that entire route through Alabama, I can't yet tell. One thing, though, is certain: the connection between John, Samuel, and Mary went far beyond what the Atlanta Journal called being "in a business way."

Still, with the forward-facing obituary style at the time of Samuel McGarry's untimely death, we find no mention of those who went before him. Thus, our hope in following Samuel's story nets us nothing more than an interesting diversion. As the oldest son of our Eliza Murdock's sister Ellen, Samuel would have been the most likely to reveal any clues to his mother's origin, and thus his Murdock grandparents' roots. While I'll follow the stories of Samuel's younger siblings—three brothers and four sisters, as we remember from their father's obituary—perhaps it is time to explore whether we can find more answers by researching the other sister mentioned in John Murdock's will. With tomorrow's post, we'll begin our exploration of Sarah Murdock Nolan's story.  

 

 

About That Nephew Samuel

 

Oh dear. This is getting complicated. I started out hoping to learn more about John Stevens, my husband's second great-grandfather, by tracing the history of his second wife Eliza Murdock.

Only problem: women living during the latter half of the nineteenth century often weren't highlighted in headlines. So when I discovered Eliza had well-known businessmen in Lafayette, Indiana, as brothers, I started trailing their information to discover just how the Irish Murdock family came to settle in Indiana. But when Eliza's brother John—a single man, at that—left a will upon his untimely death naming his three sisters, what was I to do? Finding information on three nineteenth-century women is no easier than discovering the facts on one woman of that era.

Enter nephew Samuel, named alongside his aunts and mother in John Murdock's will. Perhaps, I thought, his life story might illuminate the immigration details featured in a bragging piece about his better-known other uncle, James Murdock.

And so, here we are, genealogical guinea pigs game to try any avenue of exploration to find the details that feed a well-groomed genealogy. Let's see if nephew Samuel provides any clues to lead us onward on our research trail.

When Samuel first made his appearance, it was in his uncle John Murdock's 1874 will. That document was entered into the Tippecanoe County court record on April 2, 1874. The stipulations set by John Murdock indicated that Samuel had not quite yet reached the age of twenty one years. Indeed, as we'll see in subsequent census records, Samuel was born in August of 1853, making him just months shy of reaching that mark at the time of his uncle's death.

Although Samuel was son of Eliza's sister Ellen and her husband, listed as Thomas "Megarry" in his brother-in-law's will, I have yet to find him in his parents' household. By the time of the 1870 census, Samuel had apparently left his parents' home, but he must have stayed in close proximity.

Why do I surmise such a conclusion? Simply because within the next five to six years, Samuel had found a bride from among the young women living in that same Indiana community.

Samuel's bride, Mary Finnigan, had been living, at least back in 1870, with her older brother John Finnigan and their mother Margaret in the Lafayette household of Mary's step-father, Patrick Lynch. By 1876, Samuel had made his proposal, Mary had said "yes," and the couple celebrated their wedding on October 30 of that year—two and a half years after Samuel's uncle John Murdock's bequest.

By the time of the 1880 census, still in Lafayette, Samuel and Mary had welcomed their first son whom they named John, perhaps in honor of the uncle who had vested so much interest in Samuel's future. But they were not to remain there for long. Although we don't have the 1890 census to explain to us the young McGarry family's next move, we can intuit from the 1900 census their pathway into a future far removed from the city their immigrant parents had adopted as home. We'll explore more of Samuel's story tomorrow.

 

Image above: The November 14, 1876, return from the Tippecanoe County, Indiana, marriage record of Samuel L. McGarry and Mary A. Finnigan; image courtesy FamilySearch.org.